


after the end

by ToAStranger



Category: Dream SMP (Fandom), Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, I didn't plan this and I didn't want it but here we fucking are I guess, Post-Doomsday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:29:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28605990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToAStranger/pseuds/ToAStranger
Summary: There’s a whisper of sound.  A rumble of pleasure, deep and resonant, from the back of his head.  It tingles, prickles, pricks like the finest of needle points, up and across his scalp.  A sweet, sinister pain.  A cacophony of voices, all singing their satisfaction, and still-- always, always-- hungry for more.Blood for the Blood God.
Relationships: Technoblade & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Tubbo & Tommyinnit, Wilbur Soot & Phil Watson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 121





	after the end

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, whattup MCYT/DreamSMP fandom, here's my little addition after today's events. Zero shipping, all character studies, just based on my own observations of character arcs and motivations. 
> 
> Someone asked me for heavy angst, so you can blame them.

**I.**

It’s the smell that does it. 

Sulfur and gunpowder. The scorched earth; the damp underground. Blood and dirt and death. Thick, wet,  _ rancid.  _

The olfactory echo of a nation in ruins. 

They say that scent, that the sense of smell, is the one most inherently linked with memory. With emotion. 

Tommy tells himself that’s why, when he opens his eyes, stirred from a troubled sleep, there are already tears gathered at the corners of his vision. It’s the smell of their defeat, of their hopes for peace burnt to a cinder; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. 

Even now, his ears are still ringing. The explosions-- constant,  _ unstoppable--  _ from the battle reverberating through his skull; rattling his teeth. They ache--  _ he  _ aches-- bone deep and so cold that it burns. Like he’s frozen on the precipice of  _ fight  _ or  _ flight,  _ muscles strung tight, heart still pounding, blood  _ on fire--  _

“You’re awake.” 

Tommy blinks. Blinks again, and turns his head. Watches as Tubbo folds over, practically crouching as he ducks past the rubble in order to draw closer to where Tommy is laid out on the cot in their temporary shelter, clutching at the handle of a pale filled to spill with water. There’s a bit of cloth hanging from the edge that used to be white; stained, now, with soot and with blood. Tubbo is still limping. 

Tommy tries to push himself up. 

Pain lights up the ends of his nerves, like an electric shock, and he grunts as his vision swims. Tubbo makes a small sound, from the back of his throat, and sets the pale down. Shuffles over, as quick as he can with his right leg dragging, and falls onto his knees next to Tommy. 

“No, don’t get up,” Tubbo mutters, pressing Tommy back down, a hand placed with care at Tommy’s left shoulder. “Lay back down, Tommy, you’re hurt.” 

Tommy gasps and gasps-- then clenches his jaw shut as Tubbo coaxes him back down, back molars grinding as the tendons in his neck and down his right arm seem to seize up. Spasm.  _ Burn.  _

“What--?” Tommy gasps again, blinking and blinking, a fresh spell of tears rolling down the sides of his face.  _ “What--?”  _

“You got struck by lightning,” Tubbo tells him, boyish face pinched in a grimace that looks all wrong. “Remember?” 

Tommy’s breath leaves him in a gust. “Right.” 

“I’ve already got a potion in you,” Tubbo assures him, tone a bit hurried as he drags the water bucket over, as he dips the rag into it and rings it out; his knuckles are cracked, there’s a scrape on his cheek, ash clings to his hair and dirt under his nails; he smiles a toothless smile. “And got salve on the worst of it.”

“Right,” Tommy repeats, dull, tired.

Exhausted. He’s so fucking  _ exhausted.  _

“It’ll scar,” Tubbo remarks, a touch softer, and then he places that cool, wet rag onto Tommy’s forehead, grim smile going a bit crooked. “But, hey, at least we’ll match.” 

Tommy frowns, squinting up at him. “We’ll match?” 

“Well, yeah,” Tubbo bobs his head a bit; shrugs a shoulder. 

Tommy watches-- some part of him that is too distant now, that he’s too tired now, to listen to roaring in horror at what has been done to the both of them-- as Tubbo peels the neck of his own shirt aside a bit. Just enough for Tommy to see the stretch of scars, white and puckered and angry, that draws from Tubbo’s collar down beneath the cotton of his shirt to cut across his chest. 

Tommy’s hand comes up, to press over his own heart, and feels the scratch of makeshift bandages. His chin dips, neck and back protesting, and he catches sight of bloodied cotton pulled taut over his own chest and shoulder. 

“Oh,” he breathes, biting down on the inside of his cheek as it wobbles out of him. 

Tubbo clears his throat, slumping back against his heels, lips pressed thin. “Yeah. Um. So, you just need to rest, now. Heal up, y’know?” 

Tommy drops his hand away. Drops his head back. Stares up between the cracks of the foundation they’d taken shelter under, at the sky, filled with smoke and no stars. 

His throat goes suddenly tight. There’s a tremor, fine and subdued but promising  _ violence,  _ that trembles through him, fingertip to toe. He takes one shuddering breath, and then another. 

He wants to  _ weep.  _ Wants to scream and rage and  _ ravage--  _

Tubbo’s hand finds his own, resting over his wrist, giving a small squeeze. “You just need rest now, Tommy. The rest can wait for later.” 

His voice is soft. Not chiding. Not angry. Not tired. 

It’s steeped, rich and heady, with  _ understanding.  _

Tommy blinks away another wave of tears. Gives a jerk of his head as a nod. Stares at Tubbo-- his friend, his  _ best friend,  _ his  _ only  _ friend-- from the corner of his eye. Opens his mouth,  _ I’m sorry  _ and  _ this is all my fault  _ and  _ this should have never happened to me, to you, to us _ dying at the back of his throat with a dull croak. 

Tubbo squeezes at his wrist again, like maybe he hears it and understands it anyway. 

_ The rest can wait for later.  _

Anger and sorrow and disbelief and grief. Finding Technoblade. Finding Dream. 

It can all wait. 

For now, it is him and Tubbo-- like it’s always been, like it always  _ should have been--  _ against the world. But, for today at least, the world is just the pair of them, huddled in the ruins of their home, licking their wounds, retribution an idea for another day. 

“Yeah,” Tommy finally says, choked but nodding, offering a beaming and watery smile up at his friend as he twists his arm to grab at Tubbo’s wrist in return; clutching and clinging and kind. “Yeah, the rest can wait.” 

He can still smell the remnants of their country burning. 

**II.**

“Pretty sure the axe is gone for good,” Techno mutters, half to himself, half to the room at large, leaning over the basin to spit more blood out of his mouth. 

Copper. Thick.  _ Familiar.  _

There’s a whisper of sound. A rumble of pleasure, deep and resonant, from the back of his head. It tingles, prickles,  _ pricks  _ like the finest of needle points, up and across his scalp. A sweet, sinister pain. A cacophony of voices, all singing their satisfaction, and still-- always,  _ always--  _ hungry for more. 

_ Blood for the Blood God.  _

He takes a handful of water into his mouth, swishes it around, spits it back out. His stomach turns. He’s growing tired of the taste of copper. 

“No chance it’s just lost beneath the rubble?” Phil asks, propped in the doorway as he is, arms crossed and eyes tired. 

Techno catches his gaze in the mirror. “Not likely.” 

With a click of his tongue--  _ what a shame--  _ Phil nods his head. 

Pushing away from the basin, Techno sighs, and snatches up the terrycloth to dry off his face and hands. “And how is our new roommate settling in?” 

“He seems… better,” Phil allows with a tilt of his head. “I’ll keep an eye on him, Techno. Don’t worry.” 

The laugh that escapes him is sharp. Bitter. Tastes like fucking  _ copper.  _

“Kinda hard  _ not  _ to,” Techno says, holding out his hands, as if to demonstrate his point by simply standing there; with his armor gone, the skull mask discarded, all that’s left are the bruises and the blood and the torn clothes. “Historically, taking in strays has been bad for my trust issues.  _ Historically.”  _

Phil’s mouth presses tight, lips pale, and he exhales sharp through his nose. The lines around his eyes tighten and then go easy; soft. 

He nods, again. “I’ll keep a  _ very close  _ eye on him. But I don’t think you need to worry, Techno. I think…” 

Phil sighs. He glances around Techno’s home--  _ their  _ home-- and the aftermath of a war Techno knows is scattered around. Weapons, bloody; potions, depleted; armor, dedented and stained and in dire need of repair. 

Phil’s gaze lingers on the one wolf, curled up by the fire, the Enderman hovering by it, still clutching at its chunk of earth like a security blanket. Phil’s mouth twitches into a small smile. 

“I think he’ll fit in, here,” he finally says. “We’re all outcasts here, aren’t we? In our own way. He’ll fit in.” 

“Yeah,  _ okay,”  _ Techno scoffs, scrubbing at his face with the damp terrycloth before padding over toward the window that peers out over Ranboo’s temporary--  _ temporary--  _ shelter. “I’ll buy that a little more if he actually makes me a new axe.” 

Phil snorts. When Techno looks at him, Phil is reluctantly amused. 

“He could be a friend,” Phil offers, brows up, wings giving an agitated little twitch as he shifts to rest his shoulder more fully against the door jamb. “Not just an ally.” 

_ “You’re  _ my friend,” Techno shakes his head, turning his face away, closing his eyes at the itch that starts back up in the back of his head--  _ bloodbloodbloodforthebloodgod--  _ and he winces past the insistent chant. “No one else. I think-- I think I’m done with friends, for now.” 

He doesn’t think of Tommy. Doesn’t think of yelling at him from across the crater they’d made of L’Manberg. Doesn’t think of Tommy calling him  _ friend,  _ of claiming him  _ selfish,  _ of accusing him of  _ betrayal.  _ Doesn’t think of Tubbo wearing a cracked helm that Techno had gifted to Tommy. Doesn’t think of the ache, the knot in his chest, or anything else. 

A hand presses between his shoulder blades. Techno heaves a great sigh. 

“Alright,” Phil says. “No more friends, for now.” 

It’s a small victory. A small reprieve, a moment of respite, that rides on the coattails of a battle hardwon. He can taste it at the back of his mouth. 

Copper. Thick.  _ Familiar.  _

Bitter. 

**III.**

It is not cold; the absence of sensation. He thought, perhaps, back when he was more alive and less dead, that it would be cold all the time. 

Even here, standing in the snow, he can’t feel it. And it’s that absence that haunts him. 

Ironic, considering. 

From his place between the trees, Wilbur watches the lights inside of Techno’s home flicker off, one by one. Watches the torches go out, snuffing the world into a darkness only broken by the moonlight, and blinks slow. 

He thinks-- and he thinks too much, he thinks-- that he remembers a time when the cold would have bothered him. That, at some point, he might’ve walked right up to that house, knocked on the door, and known he’d be let in. Wonders if he would, now. 

He always finds himself wondering, these days. Wondering and wandering. 

Trying to find something, he thinks. Trying to remember-- always-- and trying to find something--  _ anything--  _ that would make the absence just a little less hollow. 

Leaning against the tree, Wilbur huffs, and sinks down, down, down. Slides, rough bark not even catching on the wool of his sweater, until he’s sat in the snow, staring at the house, sitting on its own, in the dark. 

Like a boat at sea. Adrift. Alone. 

Scooping up a fistful of snow, he squeezes it between his fingers. Knows-- or thinks he knows-- that it should  _ hurt _ after a while-- that it should be cold, then  _ not cold,  _ then so hot that it aches. 

He doesn’t feel it. Feels nothing, really, beyond the restlessness in his chest. The old scar, black and bleeding, a constant over his heart. 

There’s a crunch of boots on snow. A flutter of feathers. 

Wilbur tips his face up, forgets, and smiles. “Hi, dad.” 

He doesn’t get up. He can’t feel the cold, anway. 

**IV.**

When Phil closes his eyes, he can still see it perfectly. Despite the pain, his left wing singed and aching, he still remembers with perfect clarity the way Wilbur had looked at him that day, so long ago. 

He’d been shaking, Phil remembers. Shaking and crying, his entire body begging for help, even as he spat venom and hysteria onto the rubble at Phil’s feet. His head had been bleeding. He was pale. There was no shine to his eyes, anymore. 

Phil had always been gifted with very good eyes. No detail lost; no shadow forgotten. He’d needed it, when he was younger; when he burned as bright with righteous anger as the young men he’d found himself surrounded by, these days. 

These days. It seemed more a curse than a gift, these days. 

It ensured he never missed a damn thing. 

The lost, dazed glaze of Wilbur’s eyes-- never alive and bright, no, not anymore-- that keeps happening more and more, now. The way Techno cringes, shies, shudders away from every touch; the hard glint of his eyes when they’d made it home from the crater they’d made in place of a country. The horror and hurt on Tommy’s face as he’d looked out over what they’d done. The looks on all of their faces. 

The pit they’d left behind. 

_ It needed to happen,  _ Phil tells himself as he guides Wilbur over to the temporary kennel they’d made of his unfinished home.  _ A necessary evil.  _

He opens one of the doors, nodding as Wilbur quietly babbles to him about the snow falling, heavier and heavier, overhead. He opens one of the doors and stops. 

When Phil had left Techno to rest, wanting to take a round of their borders before going to bed himself, he’d still been in the main cabin cleaning up. He’d expected the poor guy to crash not long after-- the aftereffects of extended potion use, the way he’d done today, were always exhausting-- and isn’t surprised he’s right. 

He’s just surprised at where Techno decided to crash. 

Half buried under at least a dozen wolves, Techno snores in the corner of the ramshackle house. He’s got his cape-- the blue one, the one that Phil has a match to-- draped over him, his head ticked back, his mouth open in a snore. The Orphan Obliterator rests at his side, sheathed and propped against the wall. 

At his side, Wilbur snickers. 

A hissed  _ hush  _ comes from the opposite corner. Phil peers through the dark, spots Ranboo’s big eyes, green and red and wide as he glances between Techno’s sleeping form and the two of them in the doorway. He’s got a long, boney finger over his mouth, his ears low, his long body curled in and huddled on itself in the corner. He’s got a pillow next to him and a blanket over his shoulders. 

Phil bites down his own laugh. 

_ “This a sleepover?” _ Phil whispers. 

Ranboo’s ears perk up. 

“A sleepover?” Wilbur asks, jerking when Phil elbows him a bit, and then lowering his voice in a horrible whisper; the boy never did have a stealthy bone in his body.  _ “A sleepover? Am I invited?”  _

From his corner, Techno snorts. “Shut  _ up!  _ I’m finally gettin’ some  _ sleep,  _ some  _ good rest,  _ over here. Either lay down and be quiet, or get outta here!” 

There is a moment of silence that follows. 

Then, Techno’s snoring starts up again. Wilbur beams.

As he moves away from Phil’s side to tip-toe through the pack of wolf pups that litter the floor, Phil closes the door quietly behind him. There’s a small, sad smile on his face. Techno turns over a bit, huffing. Ranboo, quiet and eager, bundles himself under his blanket and settles into his own spot. Wilbur searches a chest for an extra quilt. 

The sight of it all, playing out before him, is almost perfect. 

**V.**

It’s quiet. Even the rush of the sea beneath him, crashing against the jagged edges of the cliffside, is a hushed noise. 

He can still hear the bombs, going off like fireworks, in the echo of his head. 

L’Manberg is long behind him, a distant swansong belonging to someone else, but its people still linger on. A symphony of possibilities. An orchestra just waiting to be conducted. And he does so like the way the instruments wail. 

Smiling to himself, Dream stares down at the swell and crash of water. He turns his mask over in his hand a time or two. Glances up, after a long while of sitting in silence, at the first signs of light breaking on the horizon. Reds and blues and purples blurring across the sky. 

A new day. 

Dream leans back and straps his mask back on. 

“A new day,” he breathes. “And so many possibilities.” 


End file.
